Tuesday, October 9, 2012

I said yes

Brandon and I dated a year before he proposed to me. We dated exactly ONE year.

August 25, 2007

Brandon picked me up from my grandparent's house for our 1 year anniversary date. I knew he had a ring, I just didn't know when he was going to give it to me. I had my speculations it would be that day but I had been wrong before and I didn't want to get my hopes up again.

I had no idea where we were going that night. He always made me do all the work for our dates, choosing when and where, but I wanted tonight to be special. I wanted tonight to be a surprise. I wanted HIM to put forth a little effort.

-----Valentine's Day that year, I went above and beyond. I typed up 100 reasons why I loved him, cut them into mini confetti, and put them in his card, where I wrote him a letter telling him how lucky I was to have him in my life. I also set up a scavenger hunt for him to find his gift. Once he found it, I cried. I put forth all this effort and he acted like it was nothing. He gave me a card, "love Brandon", and a teddy bear. We got in his truck to head to dinner and he had nothing planned. I cried again. Every nice restaurant around had at least an hour long wait and he had an hour drive home where he couldn't be out too long. We settled on Wendy's. I was disappointed, to say the least.

On the way to my unknown destination, I get a phone call from my parents. Mom proceeds to tell me that Brandon had come up to their house, before he picked me up at my grandparent's house, to ask permission for my hand in marriage. Buzz kill. I couldn't believe it, the one time I had no idea what was going on, someone had to ruin it. I quickly hung up the phone while Brandon tried to play the incident off, saying it might not be tonight.

We pull up in the same movie theater parking lot that we first met, just one year ago. Same place, same date, same time. Brandon tells me to sit tight and gets out of the truck. He hands me a scrapbook. I open it and tears begin to flow. In this scrap book I find movie ticket stubs, pictures, notes, and cards from the past year. All little memories he had kept. I couldn't believe he did this for me. I was impressed. On the last page, he had written me a letter. By this time, he was crying and when I looked over at him standing beside me with my passenger side door open, he drops to one knee on the asphalt and asks me to marry him.

-----This was the day I had been waiting for my entire life. Half of my "needs" were met. So what if his proposal was in a parking lot and not some fancy restaurant. So what if I knew it was coming. So what if I had seen red flag after red flag, like the time he got me a build a bear but said they "mispelled my name" on the certificate so he just gave me the bear (in my mind, I firgured it was for another girl but I looked the other way)... no one is perfect right? Once I graduated highschool, my mom had been on my back about getting a job after college and getting married. She always threw it in my face that she was married by the time she was 21. I know she didn't mean to pressure me but there was always that constant reminder in the back of my head telling me, "I need to get married, asap." I didn't want to spend the rest of my life alone. I was scared of being by myself. Apparently, Brandon was as good as it was going to get and I didn't need to miss this chance of having someone.

Ofcourse I said yes. I was so wrapped up in everything. It was so easy to ignore the red flags from the past, like the lies he had told me about the "other girl" on our first date, the way he had already started to manipulate me when he would get caught in lies when the "other girl" would call, when there was a diamond ring, that happened to be my size, dangling in my face.

Brandon had planned nothing else for the evening, SHOCKER, but I was in such a daze and dreaming about my wedding so much, I didn't care. I made calls to friends and family to let them in on the news. We ate at a cute little italian place near by and headed to Brandon's family's house to tell them the news, then made our way back to my grandparent's house.

I couldn't wait to plan my dream wedding. I came straight home and made an engagement page on theknot dot com. I immediately started looking at dresses and themes and colors and cakes and magazines. I was bound and determined I was going to have the perfect wedding, besides, the perfect marriage comes from the perfect wedding, right?